


Aftermaths

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: War (2019)
Genre: 3 Things, 3+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Gen, Major Character Injury, Married Couple, Missing Scene, Nuns, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29387805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: Three women with whom Kabir did not have a conversation, and a girl with whom he did.[This fic is brought to you by my brain demanding to know how our protagonist gets from "only still on his feet because of adrenaline in the Arctic Circle" to "well-dressed and self-possessed in Australia," and also by my love for underused female characters.]
Relationships: Aditi Nahta & Colonel Luthra, Kabir Dhaliwal & Aditi Nahta, Kabir Dhaliwal & Ruhi Verma
Kudos: 2





	1. Leela, Finland

“So,” said Leela, when it became clear that Esko wasn’t going to break the silence, “what do we tell the boss?”

Esko sighed comprehensively. “That the enormous explosion in the middle of the ice sheet definitely wasn’t our fault.”

“Are you always this bad at thinking up cover stories, or only when you’re stressed?” Esko only sighed again. “Look,” said Leela, without taking her eyes off the horizon, “if the Finnish Forest Service didn’t want its employees to accept fabulous sums of money for taking an afternoon jaunt in the helicopter, they should pay us better.”

Esko murmured unhappily. “Look at that. Look at it. That’s an entire ship, obliterated. Whatever did that…”

“Only the fallout is our problem,” said Leela firmly. “And we’re on the scene early. If any debris has flown far enough to threaten the forest, or if there’s major shifting or cracking on the ice, we’ll be on hand to see it. That’s what we have to explain: how we happened to be so conveniently on the spot.”

“And about why we took a crazy man out to the middle of an ice sheet in the first place.”

Leela made an exasperated noise. “Esko, we don’t have to say anything about him.” 

Her partner glanced across at her, startled. “But what if… what about… what if he’s responsible?”

“Why?” asked Leela simply. “You think he’s some sort of rogue terrorist who really, really hates reindeer?” Esko gave a startled breath of laughter. “I’m glad that story seems ridiculous even to you. No,” continued Leela, “I think he wanted to stop it. After all, why was the ship there?”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t moving, when we passed over it. It was just… sitting there.”

“Environmental survey?” asked Esko weakly.

“Wrong logos. It was a military vessel.”

“You’re sure he wasn’t some kind of terrorist?”

“Coming to the middle of an ice sheet to interrupt a routine training exercise?” snapped Leela. “Shit,” she added, as they circled the flaming wreckage. “No survivors, then.”

“And no cracking,” added Esko, with patent relief. “And the wreck is already settling. We’ll have to come back out over the course of the next weeks, but it could have been so much worse.”

Leela gave him a wry smile. “Precisely. The first anxious headlines will have died down by the time we know anything about the ice.”

“I didn’t mean that. Not only that,” amended Esko. 

“I know you didn’t.” Leela held out a packet of biscuits in a conciliatory gesture.

“Thanks.” After a few moments, somewhat crumbily, he asked: “What do you think the vessel was doing?”

Leela shook her head. “If I had an idea, I wouldn’t have asked you.”

“Ha ha.”

“Esko,” said Leela, more urgently, “are those tire tracks?”

He squinted against the brightness of the snow, angling the helicopter into a turn that would take them closer to the surface of the frozen sea. “It makes no sense, but yes, they are. And yes, we should follow them.”

“It’s no good,” she said after some minutes; “they diverge there. And anyway, it’s not our job to play detective.”

“It’s strange, though. No one uses these roads but us, usually.”

“No.”

“And those aren’t forestry vehicle tracks.”

“No.”

“And I still don’t like it, out this close to Russian waters.”

“The ship was one of ours, on our territory… the only way it would have caused an international incident would have been by exploding miles further out.”

Esko sighed again. “He has to have had some reason for going there.”

“Wait. 10 o’clock.”

Esko followed her gaze to where the flare arced above the conifers, and swore under his breath. “I really didn’t want this to be our problem.” 

Privately, Leela agreed with him. But she remained silent as he landed the helicopter, sparing a muttered curse for the wreckage at the front of the church, the crumpled metal of once-sleek automobiles under sandstone, like a clumsy allegory for worldly pride.

She spotted the body before the rotor had stopped whirring heavily overhead. It—he—was collapsed in the lee of one of the fallen pieces of masonry. At least he’d had the sense not to trust to the damaged wall. Conscious of her cold hands, she took off her earmuffs, unclasped her seatbelt, and disembarked, grateful for the bracing clarity of the early spring air.

Leela steeled herself against the smell of blood, and knelt in the snow, and found a stubborn pulse, placing her fingers against the stranger’s throat. His gaze found her, glassily, from under half-lowered lids. Leela smiled at him. And then she looked down, and saw his hand, and promptly turned aside to vomit.

“I’ll do the first aid,” said Esko grimly, already opening the kit. “You call ahead to the hospital.”

This she did, listening with half an ear to Esko’s muttered Finnish commentary and artificially loud English observations. “It’s okay—is there anyone else? Anyone else here?”

When she got off the phone, Esko said to her: “Don’t go into the church. The other man is dead.” 

Leela immediately disobeyed this directive. Bent at the waist, her shoulders braced, she ran. Behind her, she heard Esko’s shout and the stranger’s hoarse cry. It did not take long to confirm the truth of what the stranger said. The body lay crushed under metal and wood, surrounded by broken glass. Leela did not approach it. She took a deep, steadying breath, and knew that she could tell anyone who asked that she had not taken the stranger at his word.

For a few moments after she emerged, they were all silent. Then, effectively putting the incident behind them, Esko said to her in Finnish: “It would be better if we had more equipment, but we can have him almost to the hospital by the time a medical team could get here. And time matters. See if we have a board we can put him on.”

Leela did, and they did. Their stranger did not have to be asked to take weight on his sound hand and leg, though Leela did not like the sound that he made as he did so. 

“Okay,” said Esko, “okay.” For her alone he added: “It would be better if we had saline solution. We’ll get him under the emergency blanket. Try to get him to drink water.”

“Right.” Leela was trying to concentrate on the unwieldy stretcher between them, and not the drawn face of the man who would not give his name. 

“And hope he hadn’t lost too much blood before we got here,” continued Esko. “If there’s one thing that can make more trouble for us than bringing him in alive, it’s bringing him in dead.”

Bending uncomfortably from the bench in the helicopter cabin, she murmured reassurances in Finnish. English platitudes felt too much like a lie. She tried to dribble water into the stranger’s mouth at a pace that would let him swallow most of it. And she wished that, when he opened his eyes, they did not fix only briefly on her before drifting away, as if seeking someone else.

Later, standing next to Esko on the hospital roof, she said: “Who do you suppose he thought would see the flare? We wouldn’t have come back if it hadn’t been for the explosion.”

“Which you don’t think he was trying to cause,” said Esko slowly. 

“No.” 

Esko sighed. “Maybe he was prepared to die. Maybe he has a drop of Finnish blood in him—all that melancholy.”

And Leela smiled, because she knew her partner was trying to cheer her up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leela and Esko are taken from lists of common Finnish names; I've done my best to give them plausible duties and equipment as foresters. The question of how Kabir, without allies and thus presumably without resources, gets out to the ship, is unanswered in the film. I have hypothesized that paying handsome bribes to insignificant people is as good a way as any of remaining nearly invisible, and entirely anonymous.


	2. Aditi, Delhi

Aditi, sleepily half-stumbling through the airport, was chiefly conscious of being very happy to be married. It could so easily not have happened. It would have been easy to drift apart from Viraj after university, separated by new jobs and new responsibilities. It would have been easy to break up in their mid-twenties, driven apart by the pressures of his career… and, more decisively, by the pressures and dangers of hers. It would have been devastatingly easy to determine, after months and perhaps years of tearful and passionate conversations, that there was just no way to negotiate a long-term future together. _Oh, I had a sweetheart at university_ , she would have said, years later. _We had coding classes together, and then we organized hackathons. We were inseparable, for a time._

Instead, here she was, her arm looped through his, tired and contented after a week in the jungle, and a week on the beach, and ready to settle gradually back into something like normalcy.

“I’ll book a taxi,” Viraj said, “if you get the bags.”

“Mm,” said Aditi.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes,” she said, and yawned immediately. “I’ll be fine once I have tea.”

She turned on her phone half-absently, while waiting for the cases to emerge. Its buzzing in her bag was vaguely amusing, a mild stimulus to keep her from nodding off. She pulled off her own case, grabbed a suitcase for an older woman standing on her own, and missed Viraj’s bag. She pulled out her phone while waiting for it to make the circuit, and nearly missed it a second time.

Aditi wrangled the suitcases out of the crush, leaned against them proprietorially, and called back the only number that might mean trouble. The question of why the colonel was calling her mobile phone at all could wait for later.

“Sir? Nahta.”

“I’m going to ask you a question, lieutenant, to which I want a straightforward answer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know the whereabouts of our mislaid asset?”

“No, sir.” She was suddenly conscious of being very cold.

“Do you know the whereabouts of our tracker?”

“I… no, sir.”

When Colonel Luthra spoke again, his voice was crisp and disapproving. “To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.”

“I… yes, sir,” said Aditi, who had not done Oscar Wilde at school. “Sir, there’s something I should tell you, but not over the phone.”

There was a brief and deadly silence. “How soon can you be here?”

“An hour — less, if I’m lucky. Sir,” she added.

“Very well, lieutenant.” The colonel rang off.

Aditi swallowed hard, and turned to find Viraj holding a cup of tea. “I do love you.” 

Viraj smiled. “Not only because I bring you tea, I hope.”

“No, of course not.” Aditi took a deep breath. “I promise to apologize to you five different ways, but I need to see the colonel.”

“Surely not tonight?”

“Tonight. Now. And I might lose my job and my career and your most annoying aunt will be delighted that I’m becoming a proper homemaker after all.”

“As bad as all that?”

“Don’t joke! It might be.”

“Well.” Viraj sighed. “It can’t be helped, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t say that; I’ll feel cheated of a more creative apology.” And at that, despite everything, she laughed.

It was later, when Viraj had taken the suitcases in the taxi and she had set out alone, that she found herself afraid. She searched the headlines frantically — India, satellite, rocket — and found nothing. That was, of course, as it should be, if Kabir had been successful. But in that case, why had he not returned? Aditi shivered. 

She tried to plan her defense to the colonel, and tried not to imagine the possibility that she would lose everything she had worked so long for, because of loyalty to the man who had always trusted her in the field, and who had trusted her, too, to guide the team home. 

She was not really surprised to find Colonel Luthra alone in his office, with his desk lamp burning like a votary’s candle at a lonely shrine. “Sir,” said Aditi.

“Lieutenant.” He gestured her to a seat. “Aditi.” He rubbed at one eye, and she thought suddenly that he seemed nearly old. “Let us not stand too much on ceremony; we have come too close to disaster for that.”

“Sir,” said Aditi.

“I have trusted your team, as you know; I have given your major his head. And for the past few weeks, that has felt like the mistake of my life. And for the past two weeks, we have heard nothing, either from… the traitor, wherever he may be, or from Khalid. And I am convinced that, if anyone knows more of their whereabouts than I, it is you, Aditi. So I say to you now, and it is an order: tell me what you know.”

“Major Kabir called me.” Aditi took a deep breath. “Here, on my mobile. I know, I know, you’ll be perfectly justified in dismissing me. But I never believed he could… He used himself as _bait_ ,” she said desperately. “And I could not believe that a man who would do that, and spit blood into the face of the man torturing him, would… would change so much.

“He told me,” said Aditi, “that there were four traitors. Four men. I don’t think Ilyasi realized he was giving away that detail. But it meant that the major knew he could trust me.” Seeing Colonel Luthra’s face, she added: “No matter how great his respect for you, sir…”

The colonel raised a forestalling hand. “Go on.”

So Aditi did. She explained the whole implausible mess, Kabir’s suspicions, and his resolve. “So,” she concluded, “he was using himself as bait again, not that he would admit it. One man, whom they thought they could outwit and defeat, rather than a more conspicuous mission, the risk of international incident. And I reprogrammed the rocket.” Aditi shut her mouth very tightly on this final remark. 

Colonel Luthra ran a hand through his hair. “You reprogrammed the rocket.”

“Yes, sir.” She pressed her hands between her knees. “So that even if the major failed… if he didn’t get there in time, or couldn’t stop the launch…”

“The satellite would be safe,” finished the colonel. Neither of them said aloud: _And there would be no bodies to find._

“But you see,” said Aditi, feeling that, on the whole, she had little else to risk, “I don’t know where they are. I put a tracker in the drive only; I don’t know where it took them. And I searched the headlines and there was nothing; but if he was successful, why isn’t he here? To confess, to…”

“To resume his place and his work,” said Colonel Luthra, rather heavily. “There is, of course, the obvious answer.” 

Aditi sat, chilled, and tried not to think about it; she could feel the hair on her arms standing up. She became aware that the colonel was still talking.

“…According to the paperwork,” he was saying, “it was due to the reckless action of a naval captain with personal debts, and to the poor maintenance of the separating walls between the fuel drums and the cargo bay.”

“Oh,” said Aditi.

“The reports of members of the Finnish forestry service that they saw a rocket have been… minimized.”

“Oh,” said Aditi again.

“Hence,” observed the colonel with satisfaction, “the lack of headlines, though not, of course, any lack of interest or agitation on the part of international intelligence services.”

“No.”

“It would seem,” continued the colonel, “that your programming talents are rather… underused in the field.”

 _Here it comes,_ she thought; _he’s going to fire me and place me at some office job in the public sector, and I shall be bored out of my mind and miserable._

“A transfer, I think,” said Colonel Luthra, “in view of that and the fact that your team is… dissolved.” _Dead_ , thought Aditi wildly, _they’re all dead._ “Come now, Lieutenant. I can hardly discharge you for saving the country, no matter how, ah, unorthodox your methods or suspect your authorization.”

“No, sir,” said Aditi mechanically. “Thank you, sir.”

“The thanks is yours, lieutenant—unofficial, perhaps, but heartfelt. Now go home to that new husband of yours.”

Aditi stood up, and saluted, and did not shed a tear. “Yes, sir.”

Some two months later, she found a postcard among the bills and circulars. “Viraj,” she called, “do you know anyone in Sydney?” 

“What?”

She turned the postcard over, and sat down abruptly in one of the kitchen chairs. The writing was, she was alarmed to observe, shaky, as though the pen were imperfectly controlled. But it was still unmistakable, familiar from countless notes concerning mundanities and essentials. The message itself was without salutation or signature. It read:

_Sorry for being late to the wedding. You were radiant. Thanks again for wedding present in reverse. As you can see, it was useful. No major disfigurement; you should recognize me when I’m next able to visit. All best wishes._

“What?” said Viraj again, coming into the kitchen, and then: “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” said Aditi, and burst into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am entranced by the fact that Aditi gets married; I like to think it's a love match.
> 
> I don't know that Ilyasi _does_ give away the gender of the traitors, but if he does, that explains how Kabir can trust Aditi, when otherwise every certainty has been eroded for him.
> 
> As for the handwriting: I don't think there's any way that Kabir could have avoided damage to tendons and nerves, even with prompt repair surgery.


	3. Sister Mary, Saint Roch School

Sister Mary was contented in her vocation. Whatever her moments of doubt—and they had been many—she had never seriously doubted that she had found her right place. And she felt fortunate, too, in being given responsibility for the Year 6 girls. It could be a tricky age, wistful and ambitious and still, in some ways, very young. But Sister Mary loved her girls, their intense passions, their still-childish earnestness, and their boundless enthusiasm.

Still, there were challenges. The peaceful round of prayer with her sisters, the clear light in the chapel, the fresh flowers at the feet of the Virgin… these things sometimes seemed worlds away from the trials and tribulations of the dormitory. And managing the latter became infinitely more difficult when one of her girls had trials and tribulations of her own.

Deaths were always difficult. Old age and, sometimes, illness, took beloved grandparents; and Sister Mary felt it to be her duty to help her charges grapple with the vast finality of this earthly loss. Divorce was, often, harder. For divorce had none of the terrible clarity of death. And she could utter no comforting words about the tears of Christ, or about the coming supper of the Lamb. 

The death of a parent was a nightmare. It came mercifully seldom. But whether through long disease or sudden catastrophe, it was a dreadful and a distorting thing. Sister Mary, praying the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows, worried about Naina, and about her daughter. Ruhi was a sweet child, and a resilient one. But Sister Mary feared that she was too quiet; that she would become increasingly withdrawn from the world, and eventually, perhaps, afraid of entering it.

There was the bicycle, of course. That was a help. Sister Mary told herself that she should be grateful for it without reserve, without a pang of anxiety. But she worried, nonetheless, about the family friend of whom Ruhi spoke with such blithe and unspoilt confidence.

It was in this mood that the Mother Superior’s message found her.

Sister Mary went, and tried not to worry, and tried not to wonder. These were no part of the rule concerning obedience. So she went, and sat at Mother Thomas’ bidding, and folded her hands in her lap.

“Sister Mary,” said Mother Thomas without further preamble, “how is Ruhi?”

Sister Mary started slightly. Never could she quite accustom herself to such manifestations of divine leading. Especially when she was not sure what they meant, or what they required of her. “All things considered,” she said cautiously, “well. She doesn’t always sleep well,” she added scrupulously. “And she’s a bit easily overset. But she’s a sweet, steady girl, and she has good friendships here.” Sister Mary sighed. “In a way, it helps that we’re what she has known for most of her life.”

“Yes,” said the Mother Superior ruefully. “And what do you make of the man?”

“Ah,” said Sister Mary. She contemplated her clasped hands. “Ruhi speaks of him as a friend of her mother’s. And that may be the whole truth of it. Ruhi certainly believes it. And the girls can be very worldly these days, even at her age.”

“And?”

“I… I have to keep reminding myself to be on guard,” confessed Sister Mary. “Wise as serpents, innocent as doves. But he is entirely attentive to her. He never seems to be performing, not for me, not for the other parents. He’s been generous, but the presents haven’t been… well, they’ve been things she’s wanted or needed, not things he wanted her to have.” Sister Mary colored slightly. “A bicycle, a set of paints, and he gave me money for new cleats, which she’ll need soon.”

“Hm,” said Mother Thomas. “You don’t say anything of his character.”

Sister Mary smiled. “Don’t I?”

“Perhaps you are right, sister. I asked you because I have in front of me a most extraordinary communication. This letter informs me that, if he dies, a firm of lawyers will contact us regarding a trust he has set up for Ruhi’s education. He specifies university or art school, according to her preference. If he lives (the letter says), he wishes to initiate procedures of adoption, as he understands the Order is in a position of legal guardianship under Naina’s will, etc.”

Sister Mary blinked. “Goodness,” she said, and then she seized on the most disquieting part of the letter. “ _If_ he lives?” 

“Indeed,” said the Mother Superior grimly.

* * *

Sister Mary added him to her prayers. And it felt like an answer to one when, the week before a football match, the Mother Superior asked if she could arrange a video call before Ruhi’s art lesson.

“He’s in Finland, apparently,” said Mother Thomas, with something like resignation. “Had the time difference and the usual time at his fingertips. Would life be easier, do you think, if all the parents were so organized, or would it feel strangely like losing the upper hand?”

“I couldn’t possibly say,” said Sister Mary.

She sat quietly with her sewing, and told Ruhi not to fidget on her chair while the connection came through.

“Kabir!”

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“We have a football match on Saturday! Why are you in Finland?” Sister Mary wondered, briefly, if it would be worthwhile telling the girl not to shout. 

“I remembered… and I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I was visiting Santa Claus.”

Ruhi giggled. “Nope.”

“Ah, well then… I’ve seen a sea covered in ice, and a forest covered in snow, and I’ve finished my work here.”

“So will you be at the match?”

“I’m not coming back quite that soon, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?”

“Well, a building I was looking at was unsound. It… parts of it fell down.”

“Oh. Because of physics? We’ve been learning about physics.”

His laughter came faintly through the speakers. “Yes, because of physics.”

“Did it collapse while you were in it?”

“No, no, just… a scaffold collapsed; I was hit by some stone. I’m fine.”

Ruhi contemplated this pronouncement. At last she said: “And did you do your very best?”

There was a moment’s heavy pause. “I did.” 

“That’s okay then.” 

“Thank you, Ruhi.”

“You’re welcome. I miss you,” she added.

“I miss you too.”

“You’ll come soon?”

“As soon as I can.”

When this promise was kept, the first Sister Mary knew of it was Ruhi cannoning across a room full of students and their parents. She collided gleefully with a man who carried a cane in his left hand; Sister Mary noticed that his lips parted on a gasp, and that his face opened in a smile.

“Kabir! Did you see me? I was one of the demons dancing by the altar. I made horrible faces.”

“You were very fierce. Did you have fun?”

“Oh yes. The Prince chased us off with his bow. These are the drawings we made when we read the play. It’s about how it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is, but you should always do it.”

“That’s a good lesson. Do you want to show me which drawing is yours, or should I guess?”

As they walked off together, he put his right hand on the girl’s shoulder; and Sister Mary, looking after them, crossed herself instinctively. The dark scarring was so shockingly familiar that she almost wanted to make sure that the hand holding the cane was unmarked. But she told herself that that was fanciful, and that in any case, he was not that sort of man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dedication of the school is to St. Roch, a Franciscan friar and the patron saint of the falsely accused.
> 
> The sisters who run the boarding school appear by their habits to be Franciscan tertiaries. Especially because of their association with St. Francis, who received the stigmata, I think that Sister Mary would have an instinctive visual association for the mark of a wound piercing a man's hand.
> 
> I'm imagining, here, a school production of _Shakuntala_ (or a version of it, at least.)
> 
> A note on Ruhi's hypothesized age: the English subtitles for the film, on which I rely, say both that Ruhi is 6 years old and that she has been at boarding school for 6 years, which would make her at least 9. I am leaning towards the latter option.


End file.
